"Just be who you are, calm and clear and bright."
- Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Launch Night!

Photo by Amy Lou Stein.

Well, it was another glorious whirlwind of a launch weekend! Porter Square Books did a great job, as always, and even though the crowd was a bit smaller than last year (lots of friends were out of town for Easter weekend) there were more unfamiliar faces in the audience, which was really neat. And Mackenzi, of course, gave me the sweetest introduction.

I have a bunch of favorite moments, but here are a few. I decided to read the poitín passage on pages 152-158 (beginning with Síle’s journal entry and ending with the nightmare at the end of the chapter), and since I always love hearing how a seed of an idea grows into completion, I started off by reading a text message Seanan sent me on December 22, 2007:

Had a poitín tasting tonight. 20 year old bottle and more recent vintage. One tasted like whiskey made from battery acid and the other tasted like vodka made from battery acid. We’ll keep some for your next time.

I’m always a little surprised (delighted, but surprised!) when people tell me I’m funny. I got a lot of laughs throughout. (Credit for the funny text message goes to my friend, of course, but I did deliver with good comic timing, if I do say so myself.)

My other favorite moment came at the end, when I was signing stock—there was an internet order from my fourth-grade teacher on the top of the stack! I have such happy memories of her reading historical novels to us after recess each day. That was a sweet moment. And needless to say, there were no more cupcakes left by the end of the night.

Vanilla with butterscotch icing and coconut bacon (but again, I used the basic frosting recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World with 3/4 tsp. butterscotch extract in lieu of vanilla extract; I tried the original recipe for Kelly’s birthday picnic last summer and the frosting melted all over the place, so I’m sticking with what works best!)

I made all the cupcakes gluten free this time—just subbing Bob’s Red Mill gluten-free flour plus one teaspoon of xanthan gum for regular flour in the gingerbread and vanilla recipes. (The other two were already gluten free.) I am super pleased with how the vanilla/butterscotch/coco-bacon cupcakes turned out—I’d tried a bunch of vanilla cupcake recipes and none of them were light and fluffy as promised until Kathy Patalsky’s version. She is a genius!

Hi! I'm Camille. I only write stories that could never ever happen in real life, though I do believe in real-life magic. If we were in the same room I'd fix you a cup of tea, but for now we'll have to settle for a virtual connection. I'm really glad you're here.

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